


Wolves are born in Spring

by Minita



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire, game of thrones
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Cousins, F/M, Family, Fluff, Incest, Jonsa endgame, Love, Major character death - Freeform, Post Season 8
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-16 00:16:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19306762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minita/pseuds/Minita
Summary: Five years after the events of season 8. Sansa receives horrible news from the Wall.





	Wolves are born in Spring

They say winter is almost over but Sansa feels colder than ever. She sits in the Great Hall pretending to listen to her people. She sits at her desk pretending to read the scrolls. She gets up in the morning and lets Sarra do her hair, she puts food in her mouth but she doesn’t feel alive. It’s as if all warmth has left her body. She knows when it happened.

Two weeks ago the raven arrived. Signed by “Harald. The Lord Commander’s steward”. She was going to write back immediately, asking for details, asking for his body to be brought to Winterfell. But she couldn’t. She kept botching the parchments, her trembling hands scratching the paper, the ache in her heart blinding her. 

Then Arya came. She looked tanner but pretty much the same she was when she sailed away from White Harbour five years ago. Sansa hugged her hard and stroke her hair. Her beautiful dark like crow’s wings Stark hair. Arya cried and cried herself to sleep. Sansa wished to sleep. She wished to cry. 

“Maybe they’re bringing him here,” Arya says one morning while breaking fast with her.  
“I don’t think so Arya, the wildlings burn their dead.”

Dead. She can’t quite imagine his beautiful face lifeless, his sweet eyes closed forever, the strength of his hands gone to waste. She wants to scream. She wants to lock herself in her chambers and never leave. Yet she remains seated and composed.

Arya looks like a little girl under this light. I’m her big sister, Sansa thinks, I have to try and help her. 

“Let’s go walk in the Godswood. It’s such a warm day.”

The birds are chirping, some drinking from the pond. Sansa sees her reflection in the water walking hand in hand with her sister. Two girls. The men in her family all gone. Bran in the South. Jon dead. 

“How did it happen?,” Arya says in a whisper.  
“The raven didn’t have any details, it only said they regretted to inform me of the Lord Commander Snow’s death and that they will be writing again when the new Lord Commander was chosen.”  
“Maybe they killed him.” Sansa feels fear creeping into her heart.  
“No Arya, he was beloved by the wildlings, they appreciated him. It was probably an accident, maybe he felt from his horse.”  
“No,” Arya says with her big girl voice, “I don’t believe it. He would never leave us alone.”

But he did, Sansa says to herself, he left us once to go find a Dragon Queen, and twice to go south with her again. He came back the first time but the second time he came back in chains. Not in his hands or ankles but the worst kind. Chains in his heart.

A couple of days later she is going over the entry books, trying to figure out how many more bushels of wheat she should buy for the next months when she hears the screams. 

As she walks towards the gate Arya runs to her with a smile on her face.

“Come, come! You must see it!”

The guards are holding their swords but they look petrified.  
Sansa is breathless. She has never seen such a huge wolf. Nymeria is almost as tall as the gate, her fur scraggly and her eyes wild but she would recognise her anywhere. 

Arya goes to hug her but the beast walks away. A few minutes later they can hear a low whimper and then more. One. Two. Three. Four. Five tiny direwolves Nymeria lays down at Arya’s feet one by one. Dark grey mixed with white all of them. 

“Look Sansa! This one looks like Lady!”

Sansa puts little Lady on her lap as she does her paperwork. The wolf sits quietly at her feet when she’s sewing by the fire. She licks warm goat’s milk from her hands. She grabs the hem of her dress when she wants Sansa to follow her to the Godswood or behind the stables. 

Nymeria didn’t stay long, but all the five pups seem to be doing well on goat’s milk and following Arya everywhere, they specially like the Godswood.

Sansa wishes she could spend more time there with Arya but work is relentless. Maybe it’s true what they say, that time heals, maybe it’s just spring warming her bones but she feels a bit less frozen and more like herself every morning since Lady wakes her up with a wet lick to her face.  
One night Lady whimpers loudly and scratches the door. Sansa can’t sleep and Lady won’t stop, so she gets up and follows her outside. 

“Lady, wait for me,” she’s panting. Wild little thing, just like her mother.  
“Why did you bring me to the Godswood Lady? it’s late, we should be...”

The light of her torch shows a pair of eyes made of fire. Fur so white it blends with the Weirdwood behind him. Like a Ghost. 

She should be scared. She should be screaming. Or at least feel cold. Yet she stands there, her heart pounding in her chest, in total stillness, like if she were swimming in the pond. Maybe I died too, she thinks, I drowned this morning and this is just a dream dead people dream.

His voice is like a stream.

“Sansa.”  
His hands are warm and his tongue sweet like wine. She doesn’t want to stop, she doesn’t want to wake up. Her hands lost between his dark curls. 

“Jon.”

He breaks the enchantment first. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to cause any pain to you or Arya, I just, I wanted, to go. To disappear. The Lands of Always Winter aren’t large enough and I didn’t...I couldn’t think of any other way, I thought maybe if I let them to believe I was dead, they’ll leave me alone. I don’t know what took me over, I swear, I was...”

Sansa shuts his mouth with kisses. 

“I don’t care. You’re here. You’re here.”

He sits with his back to the tree. His beard is longer and he’s wearing wildling furs but his eyes are still the ones she knows so well. Dark, deep, sad but alive. Alive.

“What are we going to tell people?”  
”Nothing. Jon Snow is dead.”  
He snorts.  
“Do you really think they won’t recognise me? Ask questions?”  
“I don’t care.”  
“But Sansa, you are Queen, and I am a prisoner...”  
“True.” Her heart leaps in her chest. “As a deserter of your post I shall have you imprisoned in Winterfell.”  
“Sansa...”  
“I’m Queen in the North, the Night’s Watch lives on the supplies I send and is under my authority. Who would question it?”

Arya and Jon sit on the now green grass of the Godswood and play with the pups. 

“It’s odd,” Jon says, “why five pups? There’s just four of us now, and I still have Ghost.”  
“All that cold has frozen your brain,” Arya teases, “it’s one for Sansa, one for me and the others for your children.”

Jon looks up and his eyes met Sansa’s, grey and blue, Starks and Tullys, North and South mingled forever.


End file.
